Dom Casmurro 8.6 · 8.6

Here Machado begins the extended theatrical metaphor that gives the chapter its shape. Everything prior — the whole childhood, the family, the house — is demoted to what happens before the curtain rises. It is a stunning piece of self-editing: the narrator tells us how to read his own opening chapters, as scenery and rehearsal.

The pluperfect 'succedera' sets these events firmly in a completed past, sealed off behind the great afternoon. The move is also revealing of Bento's mind. He organizes his life as spectacle, with himself at the center of a staged drama, and this reflex — to see his story as an opera with a fated plot — will underwrite the jealous certainty that eventually consumes him.

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